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Sanke keg CIP attempt number 2

When I initially designed my brewery, I did so with keg cleaning in mind. The C-HERMS (Counterflow – HERMS) brewery design was partially motivated by an opportunity to purpose the dual pumps for sanke keg clean-in-place. This ended up being a complete failure. While I could very nicely heat the cleaning solution by using my brewery for this purpose, the pressure was still insufficient with the dual pumps to get the kegs sparklin’.

As you can see, the hosing became complicated quickly as I was combining output from two pumps, and splitting the return of the CIP solutions between two brew kettles. Just awkward. Furthermore, I essentially had to clean my brewery after I was done cleaning kegs.

I bought a 1/4 hp submersible pump to help in emptying my hot tub last week, and decided to give it a shot for cleaning some kegs. I utilized the same stand from months previous, and essentially just two buckets to hold solutions. Super simple. Looked something like this:

When kegging, purge with CO2 and push excess starsan through beer lines before filling

This system worked well, and becomes more efficient (time and water-wise) when cleaning more kegs at a time… unfortunately I only have a couple of these kegs for now. The process could’ve been sped up with use of an air compressor to push the solution out of the kegs at the end of each stage, but overall worked well as is, and the simplicity of it is certainly nice!